Conservation of battery power has long been an important consideration in the design of wireless devices. Battery life and the frequent need to recharge a battery are among the most important features considered by consumers when selecting a cellular telephone. However, rapid battery depletion is an ever increasing problem due, in part, to the fact that the market demands ergonomically attractive cellular telephones that typically require small batteries. In addition, popular cellular telephone capabilities like large screens and high processing power can quickly result in a depleted battery. A service that especially can be affected by the issue of low battery charge levels is a Push-to-Talk service (PTT) because it may use a reduced slot cycle index on the paging channel to lower the latency of received calls. Monitoring the paging channel often translates directly to lower battery life.
To-date, battery management is done on a wireless device and by the wireless device. That is, cellular telephones have battery charge level indicators that indicate a charge level of the telephone. When a user of the telephone observes that the charge level is low, the user may engage in one or more activities to reduce the power drain on the battery, such as reducing a volume of a ring tone or choosing not to answer particular calls based on a caller identifier (caller-id). However, such user-implemented battery power conservation techniques are very primitive, require manual implementation by the user, and do not eliminate the need for further techniques of battery power conservation.
Therefore, a need exist for a method and apparatus that provides for battery power management and that may be transparent to a user of a cellular telephone.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common and well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention.